I agree with you completely OP. I can understand why they dinged SB in dungeons, but what in the world was in hurting in the overworld? Dedicated groups at Urth's Fount did nothing but spiritbond which didn't mess with anyone else's experience. Not to mention that and the i70+ SB change to make materia even MORE expensive for new crafters and Novus hunters, smh.

It feels like SE opened the floodgates with RAF and all this new player fanfare to draw people in with a relatively easy catch up experience that would prepare them for 2.4 and 2.5, only to completely remove that and make it harder for them to catch up than it was for us originally to get where we are. I was able to get two of my friends to start playing, one of them from a certain other game where playing lifeless non-community content was the thing to do. Now I fear he may go back.

This was a very bad patch, almost bait and switch-like for new players. I hope things either revert or improve in time.